Category Archives: Media watch

We were out at dinner and Mimi started shifting around (more than usual, that kid is a fidget) and I asked her if needed to use the toilet and she said yes.

While in what looked like an interminable queue, I checked Facebook and someone had posted a link to watch the wedding so I clicked on it, and it turned out it was right at the part when Harry and William were walking in, which meant I had skipped the waiting and people on the streets waving flags part. The next thing I knew I found myself grinning broadly as Harry gazed down upon Meghan in church (in between calls of “are you done”?) and I realised I’m not that cynical about weddings after all.

I ended up watching pretty much the whole damn thing using my data service if you please, which I have a strict rule against. V made fun of me and then gave up. I showed Mimi the couple while she was ranting about wanting ice cream now! and asked if the bride was pretty and she said “yes!” And went back to ranting.

scattered thoughts:

1. Meghan’s dress was beautiful, her train even more (though the commonwealth flowers were unnecessary).

2. Harry is really into Meghan.

3. The queen’s lime green dress was a bit OTT. Not to mention the purple flowers.

4. Ginormous hats seem to be Camilla’s thing.

5. Kate seemed to be in a bad mood. Maybe she doesn’t like Camilla or maybe she was pissed that Will didn’t change thr diapers last night.

6. I really thought Meghan’s mum should have walked her down the aisle or she could have walked herself but maybe she wanted A Man or her mum didn’t want the spotlight and Charles seemed to do a good job.

7. The camera constantly focused on her mum who looked lovely.

8. Harry and Meghan were happily chatting while the hymns were going on. Haw!

9. That guy with the cello went on too long. As did the pastor – I tuned out during the sermon.

10. In a sign of our times, I found myself scared that there would be a terrorist attack as they drove down in the open carriage. I heaved a sigh of relief when they made it into the castle.

11. In between MinCat informed me that the chief minister resigned in Karnataka. High drama all around.

After I finished watching the Girls finale (this is the first time in ages I’ve actually watched a series almost live), I had to fill the void with something. So I turned to Big Little Lies that has been getting a fair bit of critical acclaim. Even the hyper critical feminist site I read approved.

Early in the first episode, however, I started getting uncomfortable. The show focuses on over-involved moms at a California school, and don’t I know this kind well? However, the portrayal of the intrigue, malice and general bitchery seemed to me a bit over-the-top. I am happy to say that while I have had glimpses into this kind of personality, fortunately at the schools my kids attend, the full-on PTA mom type is the rarity. This may be because the schools are more (upper) middle-class (so the majority of the moms work and don’t have that much time for school involvement), a lot of local parents (who probably have their own politics that I’m oblivious to), or maybe I’m just lucky. From what I’ve heard about other schools, there is a culture of mothers (and I almost never hear of dads being that involved which also irks me) pitching in a lot and the associated drama. This really seems like a Western thing. I have noticed that at Nene’s school, the PTA activities are driven by Western mothers. I did briefly get into some drama at the beginning of the year with one super annoying woman, and I have basically retreated from the whole thing.

Nevertheless, the Big Little Lies kind of competitive parenting is not something I have witnessed. I was a bit annoyed at this cliche of the women-can’t-get-along stereotype. However, as the show progressed, it became apparent that each of the central characters was shown to be more than the facade she presented at the school drop-off. Reese Witherspoon’s character Madeline was almost scary in her upbeatness (which is basically so Reese but edged with a sinister air) but at home they showed her vulnerability and also her intelligence. So that was nice. When Reese, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley go for coffee together, it took me back to the three-mums group I was part of in Nene’s kindy and I immediately tagged myself as Shailene, the outsider who was not well dressed enough.

What got to me though was the vulnerability of the children who get caught up in the politics of their parents. In the very first episode, one kid is singled out on his first day at school and it really broke my heart. I guess this is one of my not-so-secret fears as a mom and the way it plays out was so unfair. The teacher actually publicly talks about a bullying incident at school and then asks the bullied girl to point out the person who hurt her. I was actually gazing open mouthed at the screen, appalled at how stupid this was. I hope that if I were in this situation, I would just speak up before it went further and insist that the ‘investigation’ not be conducted this way.

This incident splits the mommy crowd more rigidly into camps. And when the singled out boy is not invited (understandably) for a party of the girl he allegedly bullied, Madeline decides to draw a line in the sand and refuses to send her very popular girl either. When I watched that scene, something in me snapped and I realized I couldn’t watch anymore. The whole thing was too intense, and I ended up reading up on Wikipedia what happens in the end.

[BIG SPOILER ALERT]

I’m relieved to note that all’s well that ends well. The series does not end with one massive catfight but with the women actually acting in solidarity. This rescues it for me, and although I didn’t watch till anywhere close to the end, makes me feel better.

It’s a beautifully shot series, tackling some serious issues and with great performances so it’s worth a watch. I just don’t know – even though I know the ending – if I can go through with it.

I spend a lot of time on Facebook. I read articles posted by people, I post articles I’ve read, I comment and respond to comments. It’s a source of news but also of thinking points.

However, since my recent spate of meltdowns, I’ve been rethinking my online engagement, specifically on Facebook. I got embroiled in a couple of comment threads that left me feeling upset. I decided that it was time to stop wasting emotional energy on these online discussions and cut back on Facebook. So for what feels like a (couple of?) weeks, I did not post anything and did not comment anywhere. However, I’m incapable of entirely detaching, so I did ‘like’ posts I find interesting. This is a tacit way of sharing them without inviting discussion with me further, or expecting further engagement.

I know I can’t attribute my better frame of mind entirely to this, but I think it helped. What I realise now is that Facebook is not just about active posting and commenting and the resulting positive or negative engagement, but also about energy wasted waiting for that engagement in the form of ‘likes’ or whatever. It’s not that I sit around gasping for the first like, far from it, but every time there is one you get a notification and then you react subliminally, much more so to a comment. This is the case even with the blog, but somehow, I find that – thanks to you, awesome readers – the blog discussions are more chilled out and I can detach more easily. Facebook ironically is more public because I have a range of people who actually know me and can directly impact my life on there, colleagues from work for example.

It has also made me realise that while I smart from people being snarky to me on Facebook, I can’t hand on heart say I’ve never done the same either. So when, and it’s a when not an if, I do get back into the game, I will be very careful to be scrupulously polite when commenting, even with friends. And also to cut down on commenting. This I have mixed feelings about because part of the joy of Facebook is being able to have discussions that one might not always have in “real” life with people interested in similar topics. On Facebook, if you don’t give, you don’t get. People who find Facebook boring rarely do anything on it beside lurk, and so possibly the algorithms don’t work in their favour. Nevertheless, starting a discussion means continuing one and I have to think about whether I have the energy for that. Maybe one a week, and one post a day?

I recently watched a TV programme which quoted a study that said the average Hongkonger reads 4 books a year. I gasped. Four a year is worse than I imagined when I heard people moaning about the decline in reading. Also, one of my most distinctive memories from my early days in Hong Kong is chancing upon the long lines for entry to the Book Fair (and promptly joining the queue) which seemed to indicate that reading is not a dead hobby horse yet (excuse the mixed metaphors, I couldn’t resist.)

On the other hand, I’m always bored when people wring their hands over how little they’re reading or how they should start reading again and pause expectantly presumably for me to offer some encouragement. Similarly trying are people who go: “You read so much. Suggest something for me to read!”

To the latter, I want to say: There is a universe of books. You at least have to pick a genre. Also: What I like, you may not like. But now I will say: Goodreads.com.

To the former, I am nonplussed. If you don’t read, don’t. I am married to a man who does not read and it does not perturb him or me, except when he gets angsty about me reading and snatches my book away. There are people who don’t read and since I married one, I cannot be snotty about those people though my mom, dad, sister and close friends are all readers. Only barefaced lust could have conquered that prejudice, and just barely.

The troubling assumption of these people is that reading is a good habit that needs to be cultivated. I don’t really understand that at all. For me, reading is like breathing. Breathing is not a habit. I can’t teach a full grown adult how to breadthe, can I? I read because I am.

Frankly, I probably read too much. When I realised that the husband’s argument to that effect might be making some sense, I quickly applied for a PhD in order to legitamise the amount I read. Now I shall read unquestioned. Hell, I shall read on the government’s tab. Something useful shall come out of it, I hope, but what I shall enjoy most is the reading.

Once I was lunching with a PhD student who was finishing her programme and looking for a job. “You could teach, no?” I offered. “Oh, I don’t want to teach,” she said quickly. “I just want a job that lets me sit quietly and read.” Ah, holy aspiration.

I also remember a similar conversation with Curly about our jobs and their drawbacks, which ended in her saying: “Okay, I don’t think anyone is going to pay us to sit in a spa and read books.” Well, I’ve been paid to do that, but not fulltime unfortunately.

Anyway, I digress. The point is, don’t ask a reader for help in getting you to be one. The gap is too wide.

***

Similarly blogging. People are always ruing how little they blog and how they should blog more. At least with reading everyone from philosophers to the self-help quacks agree that it’s a noble pursuit – so fine, maybe everyone should make the effort to lay eyes on the written word for the sustained period that it takes to finish a book.

But blogging? There’s no reason for it to be mandatory.

I blog because I enjoy it. I’ve kept a diary since read Anne Frank’s when I was 10. When I discovered blogging, my blog became my diary. There’s a difference between a blog and a diary, but in my case, there’s a lot of overlap. Recently, because I felt the need to explore my dark angst more deeply than I’d care to share with you, I started a private blog where I record these musings just as I used to in a physical book. The digital version is password protected and accessible anywhere (to me only) and I don’t have to rely on my family’s discretion and restraint to be sure that my dirty secrets are safe with me. AND I have Evernote to jot down random thoughts in, some of which end up being full-fledged posts on either blog. So yeah, actually, I blog twice as much as you think.

The most tedious blog posts are the ones in which people apologise for not blogging and promise to do better. Why? If you have nothing to say, don’t say it. The second most tedious ones are when bloggers force themselves to blog, often in a marathon.

The moral of the rant story: Read if you want, blog if you want. Or not. Don’t keep talking about it.

We don’t have cable. I obsess over TV series by getting V to download them. V does the downloading because he promised to when he cut the cable. He’s also more enthu about needing to watch something. Usually, I let him discover a show, sample it and then decide whether I want to give it a shot. Girls was the exception.

I skipped Breaking Bad which he really really got into. He watched the entire thing binge-style, downloading episodes on his phone and watching on the MTR even. In a month or so he was done. With the entire thing.

Then there was True Detective. I got into that. It was beautifully shot and while there was no great big twist at the end, it was more about the characters of the two detectives. I started to get into Fargo but V watched it too rapidly for me. I couldn’t keep up and I couldn’t watch it alone.

And then he downloaded Orange is the new Black. It’s a surprising choice for him because it’s a female-centric show and he’s not into that. I guess what he enjoys is the edge of grit (because let’s get real, this is not an accurate depiction of prison) and the prison humour.

But I, I love the show. It’s a girl-fest, what can I say. Women in a fishbowl, almost undiluted by the presence of men. There are straight-up lesbian plots, multiple lesbian plotlines in fact, probably for the first time in television and it’s done so nonchalantly that it’s the new normal. So it’s women, their conversations, their backstories, their petty and their grandiose machinations, their power. And by their, I mean our. It must mean something that this can only happen within the literal walls of a prison.

There are of course problems with the show. Straight up, the protagonist is white and well-to-do. The show acknowledges this privilege but it sticks to it. A white yuppie in prison draws attention in the show, and the show itself didn’t have the balls to do a black or Hispanic protagonist. There was a scene where I could see black women in the background topless, but not the white girls ever. There are loads of protagonists of colour with powerful backstories though, so we’ll take what they’re giving. Feminist critiques of the show here and here.

After the husband and I watch our nightly episode, he turns over and begins snoring almost immediately, just like after other satisfying acts, while I lie awaking, tossing and turning, thinking about the characters and their pasts and futures.

Indra Nooyi’s statements on work life balance went viral with many women refreshed by her candor on the subject, followed by a backlash of people rolling their eyes.

First, I want to say that it is tres irritating that female CEOs get asked about work-life balance and male CEOs never do. Maybe we should start asking male CEOs. Or maybe we should assume, as Nooyi kind of suggests, that CEOs don’t usually have work-life balance and thus, stop asking this question.

That said, Matt Lauer’s interview of the GE CEO Mary Barra was a far more egregious example. Nooyi’s comments on work-life balance were part of a lengthy interview on her vision for Pepsico (in which she makes far more controversial comments which few are talking about because how many people watched the whole interview?*)

Nooyi had told the story of her mom’s unimpressed reaction to her achievement before so she was asked to repeat it. As an interviewer, I can understand the need to bring in some human colour to an interview about company strategy and since she had already spoken about this, it was fair game.

Many people were unimpressed with Nooyi’s mom. I was unimpressed with Nooyi’s mom. I think Nooyi also was unimpressed with her mom. In her recounting of the incident, I read a wry acceptance of the older generation being what they are. I also think Nooyi was trying to illustrate that to a CEOs family the CEO is just a family member.

Maybe Nooyi should have refused to get the milk. Maybe she should have insisted her husband get the milk. But on an overwhelming day, maybe she decided she needed the space to calmly deal with her mom’s reaction and she didn’t want a fight, so she got the milk. Her actions seem in line with her modus operandi of doing what she feels is right at the moment and not thinking overly about it later.

This way of doing things is more apparent in the part of the interview about mommy guilt. Her daughter guilt-trips her about not being there for coffee mornings. People have criticized her approach of citing other mothers who were not there. Why didn’t she talk to her daughter about gender equality?

Honestly, I think her method was probably more effective than talking about gender equality, though such a talk was certainly warranted to her daughter and to the school. A blogger in Mumbai once wrote about how her daughter is not satisfied with her husband going to her events because all the other kids have their moms there. Nooyi was acting in real time at a school which had coffee mornings for moms and I suspect her method worked better with her daughter.

For me, it was not her exact actions that I liked but her approach which is non-apologetic. I can’t go. I refuse to agonise and beat myself up over it.

Now, about mommy guilt. Some have suggested that women should be over this by now. And I suppose, if we’re not over it, we better hush up because mentioning it only legitimizes it.

The thing though is that mommy guilt is a thing. To a greater or lesser extent. Even a feminist like moi is not immune. Maybe it’s because we were still socialized in an environment where women were primarily responsible for childcare. Maybe because gender roles have remained largely unchanged and in the communities that some of us live in, we are still pioneers in this. Maybe because women are socialized to be or just are more introspective and sensitive. I have noticed that daddy guilt is not much apparent and the reasons for it are more complicated than women just not being able to get over it already.

Maybe a little guilt is a good thing. An older and wiser commenter once said this to me when I wrote about the subject. Guilt keeps us in check. The trick is not to get over the guilt but to know when to suppress it and when to pay it heed. Nooyi’s example was her way of in her words “coping.”

What I liked best about the interview was her candor about “the list”.

You know, Raj always said, you know what, your list is PepsioCo, PepsiCo, PepsiCo, our two kids, your mom, and then at the bottom of the list is me. There are two ways to look at it. (laughing) You should be happy you’re on the list. So don’t complain. (laughing) He is on the list. He is very much on the list. But you know, (laughing) sorry, David.

I’m sure the haters will hate. Hawww what a person, how can she put PepsiCo first and her family after. But that’s who she is. Maybe that’s who you need to be a CEO. You need to be the kind of person that is obsessed with the company. I think there are some people like that and they are very difficult people to be married to or parented by. But they are who they are and in the past, only men were allowed to be those people (remember Gandhi?). And one way to look at that would be to guilt-trip all those people into choosing one or the other. Or maybe, as long as they are not horrendous but just not ideal, we can accept them if they are acceptable to us (and by us, I mean as a family member.)

Oh, I forgot about having it all. She was asked whether “women can have it all” and she said no. Many people believe she should have said “no one can have it all.” Agreed. But I also think the pressure to have it all applies more to women (see my thoughts on ‘guilt’ above). In recent times, the mommy guilt trope has morphed into the ‘have it all’ trope. Just like we are bombarded by images of women with perfect bodies (and men are only just being subjected to this pressure), we are now bombarded with women who have it all, ‘real’ women and in the movies and in literature and in the media (and men don’t have a similar pressure to ‘have it all’). So while we can say, oh blah, don’t buy into that, the message is insidious and everywhere and sometimes it’s good for someone with a loudspeaker to do a specific takedown. Which Nooyi did.

That’s my thoughts.

*V and I attempted to watch the whole interview but then V found some of her other statements on health foods too annoying and I was too sleepy to listen to someone talk about how to create value for shareholders so we switched off.

Is there no end to the social media I am on? I need to write a post on how I’m a social media addict as per V, or a social media enthusiast as per moi, but I guess the entire explanation can be summed up in one line – the internet lets me just fall down the rabbit hole and read, read, read thereby satiating my easily bored (with reality) mind and also provides the kinds of discussions I don’t have access to in real life.

So Thumbelina asked if I was on Goodreads and so I checked it out, and my God, how did this one escape me all this while. Needless to say, I’m addicted, because it’s book porn. I have this fetish for collecting books virtually because space and money do not allow me to do this in the real world (i.e. I cannot line up my fantasy bookshelf in real life, because my house literally does not have space for it). I’ve been tinkering with my shelves for the past few days, literally obsessing over the categorisation. I even went into my library record and am inputting books based on there. Yeah, a monster has been created, and it helps that it’s summer and I’m at a loose end till my boss gets snapping which she won’t because she’s on leave starting tomorrow.

Goodreads combines this ability to collects one’s reads in one place with providing reccos that are pretty good based on some creepy algorithm that analyses your reading pattern which is really useful when you have to library systems at your disposal and are spoiled for choice. The main point is reviews and discussion groups, so it’s useful to check out what people are saying about a book, and of course, since I do write my thoughts on books I read (if not really straight-up review them) anyway, I might cross-post mine.

I was dithering over whether to register as myself or my blog ID and finally went with the latter, because I know more people who read like I do on the blog than in real life alas, and the ones I do know in real life who read like me also read the blog. There’s a sliver of people who are not included in this overlap and I can live without them (on Goodreads).

My ID is TheBride. If you’re on Goodreads add me to your Friends because right now I have only three, sob!

The two are not connected, except in the case of gripes (hee hee) about the World Cup.

So I have had an upset tummy (this is the most euphemistic way I have found of explaining to people what’s wrong with me) for the past week or so. It had its roots in the Hot Chips V brought back from Bangalore at my insistence and also the amazing mangoes from his dad’s farm (separate post on that maybe, it’s too tragic to talk about the two mangoes I could not eat at this point.) Then period came and threw system out of whack and I had to crown it with eating a really dodgy kebab roll, the kind where the meat had to be spat out it was so chewy.

Voila, a runny tummy. You know it’s bad when you voluntarily eat congee. Congee and Marie biscuits are the hallmarks of sad state of affairs. And I’ve been going on like this for five days. The silver lining could have been weight loss, but only two kilos maximum have been lost, and that seems too paltry for my pains because they can quite easily be gained back when I recover my appetite. I have also been hoping for flawless skin owing to lack of oil and spice (and frankly anything else) but that has not exactly happened, though there has been reduction of flare-ups for which I’m grateful. I guess I can’t expect to glow when I’m in the grey of unhealth.

The worst part is that I have been having really severe muscle pain starting from the butt to my calves, so much so that I wondered if I have arthritis (which runs in my family). But I’ve had this kind of muscle pain before on a lesser scale with infections so I think it’s connected but I’ve had a couple of nights of literally waking up in pain and this is too much penance for just a kebab roll really.

Now that I’ve decided to see the doctor again and booked an appointment, pain has lessened. But if I decide to cancel, it will definitely come back, so I’ve decided to just go to the doctor and describe symptoms as they existed at the beginning of the day.

Okay verbal diarrhea on this subject done.

***

Now the World Cup. Obviously I’m very excited seeing as I have been excited about football World Cups since 1994 when my sister got very into it, so obviously I had to. Since then we’ve supported Italy, primarily because she had a crush on Paolo Maldini, who I also thought was hot but was forced to change track by sister and crush on Roberto Baggio instead who then went on to dash Italy’s hope by fudging a penalty kick.

Apart from teenage hormones (which we haven’t really outgrown) we also were genuinely into the football. I never got into league football, though we did champion AC Milan due to Maldini again, but we watched a fair amount of football when we could. In fact, our house was the gathering place for my sis and her guy friends to watch the World Cup when she was in college.

This is the first time I was not super excited by the World Cup. I think all the bad press about how wasteful it was got to me. And also, Hong Kong has this stupid cable system where one provider will grab the rights and then you have to sign up for some uber-expensive year-long package just to be able to watch the event. Or you can watch the free games they deign to show on the free channels, which anyway are at weird times. So it seemed futile to drum up enthusiasm.

And I managed to actually stay unenthusiastic for the first match, which was unfortunate because it was a dinger. V asked me if I wanted to wake up for it, and I was tempted but I said no in order to be responsible adult and look after children the next day and not be bleary eyed, and I’m trying to stick to that…but now I’m fully into it. Especially after we caught the Italy-Englnad match and Italy won!

I’ve actually grown less fond of Italy since the Zidane-Materazzi incident. I generally think they do too much drama (which V thinks is ironic coming from me.) Now I’ve realised they just wear the opposing team down with their drama, and then out of the blue (literally) score. It’s all very confusing to watch because they’re not the best team, but they win . Also, there’s something endearing about Mario Balotelli.

Okay now to the gripes:

There was this extremely sexist Facebook feed doing the rounds in the form of a letter of a male football fan to his wyfe (sic). It contained such gems as “U dont just pass infront of the tv if am watching soccer, u better crawl on the floor.” Signed off by “Gentleman’s Association” if you please. And the lunkheads on my timeline were sharing it. Ugh. Breaking news, guys, women watch and play football too. We even know what offside is, and it’s not that complicated!

Now laddiz. Yes, we all have teams and players that we think are hot. But can we not only post such status updates on Facebook, or talk about how hot this or that person is incessantly? Once is enough. Then also talk about the football okay? Otherwise it is too boring. Kthanxbi.

So, the Oscars. I was really looking forward to the red carpet, but as I was discussing with Curly and MinCat (who is clearly suffering from a case of get-interested-in-your-besties-interest), it was mostly meh.

Strangely, while Kate Hudson offended on both the above counts, she was my favourite for the night, proving that it is possible to be both a statuesque and pale and still be awesome. Only it’s a hard look to pull off.

My other favourites were:

Amy Adams for looking the best she’s ever looked on the red carpet for not wearing a pale coloured frock.

Kerry Washington, though I suspected I am swayed more by her face, hair, make-up and overall glow than her dress.

Biggest disappointment: Lupita NyongoI guess she had such an awesome run-up on the red carpet that I expected a complete WHAM from her. Instead, she went pale. Which for her, who always wears bold colours, is a shocker and she is not pale-skinned so it does have a different kind of effect, but it just didn’t wow me.

Note
The Oscars are basically a big advertorial. For the clothes, obviously. But also for the movies. I actually caught some of the show and maybe because I’m doing so after ages, I enjoyed what I saw. Watching the trailers of some of the movies made me want to go watch them, not just the main films but also some of the shorts, documentaries and animated ones.

I signed up for the 100 happy days challenge on instagram, because I prefer sharing my happy with strangers than my ‘friends’ apparently. But my preferred mode would have been via the blog because a lot of my happy is stuff that is better described in words than images. Nevertheless, clicking a photo makes one think and focus so maybe it does serve a purpose even if the photos are not stellar. The snapshots also literally serve as a reminder of that day so I can blog about it later. So here goes:

Day4: 17 Feb

[Ok turns out I deleted this photo from my albums and so I had to take a screenshot of my instagram photo to post here. The wonders of technology.] I’m sure I’ve mentioned how I love fashion magazines. A couple of times a year I buy one as a treat. The past few issues I’ve bought, I’ve stored because sometimes I need to cut out stuff for Benji’s craft stuff. Specifically, Benji has to do a dictionary for school where we cut out and stick photos of stuff that starts with a particular letter. Benji’s book has a disproportionate number of trendy items, ahem. So on Monday, I pulled out the old magazines again and while I didn’t find anything relevant to the letter N, I realised that I was attracted afresh to some photo spreads and began poring over the magazines again and was fairly inspired.

Day 5: Feb 18

I grumble about my new boss a fair bit, because she’s a delegator par excellence, but I need to keep in mind how she’s really nice about other things. Like I realised I messed up on my roster dates, and she just waved it off. The other happy of the day was discovering and playing with this website, which I used in the collage above.

Day 6: Feb 19

So this was one of those even keel days when nothing particularly striking happened. But a photo book we did using images from our recent family photo shoot did come in the mail. V had been impatiently waiting for it for days, so the look on his face when it finally arrived was priceless. Also, creating the book was a challenge. It was free Groupon thing and allowed us 40 pages but I didn’t have that many photos I wanted to use. But I didn’t want empty pages either and there was no way to contact the supplier to get fewer pages. So I had to put in a fair amount of creativity in using the photos and the various scrapbooking ad-ons in the software. And in the end, V mistook me saying I was “nearly done” for “done” before I had completely finished tinkering. The result, though, was quite nice.

Day 7: Feb 20

V introduced me to Jimmy Kimmel’s Mean Tweets segment and we had super fun laughing. Then, I had more fun looking up snarky posts on Pinterest and giggling in bed.

Day 8: Feb 21

When my niece Sibear visited she was taken by this flapbook that our friend had gifted Benji. So I found it on Barnes and Noble and had it delivered to her for her birthday. My sis is ill so she allowed Sibear to open the box to distract her and then she messaged me saying that Sibear is obsessed with it and wanted to put it near her pillow at night. They compromised and it lay at the foot of her bed. Oh, the joy of picking the right gift!

But even better, my sis sent me a super cute video of Sibear going “Thank you, ….” in her very strong American accent, and then “huh” [when my sis reminded her to kiss me from behind the camera] and then a big smoochy sound. Thank you iMessage! That video is going to be my happy-on-repeat for months to come.